Approved in College Board
Meeting dated 28-03-2011
Guidelines for Internal Research Grant System
College of Engineering
The limited amount of Internal Research Grant (IRG) allocated to the College of Engineering (currently 70,000 RO per year) needs to be allocated with care to ensure maximum benefit to the College. In this connection, attention shall be paid to the development of a set of guidelines that ensures meeting this objective rather than spreading limited resources too thinly across a wide spectrum of proposals. A policy document is already in place (Annex‐1) for funding such small‐scale research proposals. However, the mechanism suffers actually from a number of shortcomings that can be summarized as follows: 1) In almost all cases, the accepted proposals are underfunded. The budget cuts are high due to the limited amount for IRG and the relatively large number of proposals that are submitted from all four departments sharing the fund. 2) In contrast to the fist point above, the office of Assistant Dean (PSR) reports that allocated funds are not fully utilized by researchers. This is possibly due to the fact that allocated funds cannot make significant contribution to the research tasks in the project or are more than needed for routine budget expenditures (Annex‐2). 3) Project ranking and selections: ƒ Currently, reviewers are recommended by the PI which might raise concerns about conflict of interest issues and overall quality of the reviewing process ƒ The current practice is to equally distribute funds to all positively reviewed projects (equal percentage reduction) which can significantly reduce the funding awarded to the successful proposals. This becomes more severe if the number of submitted proposals are large in number for that cycle. 4) The financial administration of the projects is considered by many researchers over complicated with too many restrictions on several budget items. Having laid out our thoughts to be the shortcomings, the following are suggested as an improvement to the existing practice: 1) Departments should be involved in the selection process of research proposals to be submitted to the office of ADPSR by establishing their own selection criteria. This will ensure that the proposed projects are in line with departments’ research strategies. It will also allow the department to confirm the feasibility of the projects in terms of faculty time and available resources. This can be done through the Departments’ Boards or their Postgraduate Studies and Research {DPSR) committees. 2) External reviewers should be assigned by the office of ADPSR in consultation with College PSR committee to assure unbiased feedback and equity among the projects. Individual departments should be consulted for preparing a database of reviewers in different disciplines and forward it to the office of Assistant Dean for this task. 3) The departments should strongly encourage submitting proposal from a research group within the department or in collaboration with other department(s) within the college. 4) All proposals should be ranked based on the reviewers feedback. This ranking can be used as a guideline for allocating funds to successful projects. 5) A minimum of one successful proposal by the research group should be funded from each department. Rest of the projects should compete for the remaining budget. Priority should be given to new applicants and for Staff/Departments who can be identified as lagging in terms of external research fund. 6) Faculty members should expect that this grant scheme be used as a bridge rather than an alternative to external funding and therefore, members of staff with significant external funds are not encouraged to apply for IRG. 7) Each year a maximum of 6 to 10 projects will be funded. The PSR committee recommends ADPSR to discuss with the office of Research to give flexibility to PIs in terms of viewing the current financial status, transfer of unused budget from one year to another, ease of transfer from one category to other, purchase of equipment and consumables, etc. ANNEX – 1
College of Engineering share from the annual University internal research budget is used to fund
proposals submitted by the faculty of Engineering according to the following criteria:
1) The upper limit of budget for a project proposal is RO 10,000. Applications requesting
more than this amount shall not be considered.
2) One research proposal per faculty member as PI is allowed. Faculty members will not be
allocated funds for new projects (as PI) prior to completing the previous project.
3) SQU funds cannot be used for salary and tuition payment of full time research assistants
and/or Masters Students.
4) SQU funds cannot be used for contract work done outside Oman, except for sample
analysis and data collection facilities which are not available in Oman.
5) All submitted proposals will be subjected to a review and evaluation process. Priority will
be given to those with high ranking from the review process and to new faculty members
applying for the first time.
IRG Proposal Submission and Approval Steps:
Responsibility:
Action Taken:
Principal Investigator and 1. Proposal preparation. Co‐Investigators 2. Review and discussion among investigators. Department 3. Discussion at Departmental level. 4. Endorsement by the Head of Department. Principal Investigator 5. Submission to the Office of Assistant Dean for Postgraduate Studies & Research. Office of Assistant Dean Postgraduate Studies & Research for 6. Review & Approval from the College Postgraduate Studies & Research Committee. 7. Forward to the Dean for Endorsement Dean, College of Engineering 8. Endorsement by the Dean of College of Engineering. Office of Assistant Dean for 9. Forward to the Office of the Deputy Vice Postgraduate Studies & Research Chancellor for Postgraduate Studies & Research for internal and /or external review. 10. Rank proposals based on review results. 11. Recommendation of the College Postgraduate Studies & Research Committee. Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor for 12. Final Approval. Postgraduate Studies & Research ANNEX-2
Year 2005
Item Description
CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Total No of Projects
3 4 5 2 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
16,380 16,902 21,641 9324.00 Expenditure (RO)
8580.8 12,232.18 14,755.23 6758.84 % Used Budget
52.39 72.37 68.18 72.49 % Unused Budget
47.61 27.63 31.82 27.51 Progress Report
3 4 5 2 Final Report
0 4 2 1 Item Description
CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Total No of Projects
4 4 1 0 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
35550.000 13950.000 10000.000 0.000 Expenditure (RO)
8713.798 10658.756 5986.958 0.000 % Used Budget
24.51 76.41 59.87 0.00 % Unused Budget
75.49 23.59 40.13 0.00 Progress Report
4 4 1 0 Final Report
4 4 1 0 Year 2006
Year 2007
Item Description
CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Total No of Projects
3 4 5 2 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
16,380 16,902 21,641 9324.00 Expenditure (RO)
8580.8 12,232.18 14,755.23 6758.84 % Used Budget
52.39 72.37 68.18 72.49 % Unused Budget
47.61 27.63 31.82 27.51 Progress Report
3 4 5 2 Final Report
0 4 2 1 Item Description
CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Total No of Projects
3 7 5 1 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
16,787 25,747 22,958 4000 Expenditure (RO)
7609.273 13,128.68 14,759.51 3520 % Used Budget
45.33 50.99 64.29 88.00 % Unused Budget
54.67 49.01 35.71 12.00 Progress Report
3 7 5 1 Final Report
0 2 1 1 CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Year 2008
Year 2009
Item Description
Total No of Projects
2 8 3 4 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
7809 32,410 13,272 16,990 Expenditure (RO)
1686.9 17,287.68 10,849.52 10,466.97 % Used Budget
21.60 53.34 81.75 61.61 % Unused Budget
78.40 46.66 18.25 38.39 Progress Report
2 8 3 4 Final Report
1 1 1 1 Item Description
CAED
ECED
MIED
PCED
Total No of Projects
3 3 1 3 Duration
2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years 2 ‐ 3 Years Approved Budget (RO)
26,358 12,267 9121 22,253 Expenditure (RO)
1606 244.5 2429.4 2769.574 % Used Budget
6.09 1.99 26.64 12.45 % Unused Budget
93.91 98.01 73.36 87.55 Progress Report
1 2 1 3 Final Report
Ongoing Ongoing Ongoing Ongoing Year 2010